Buying Diamonds with a Penny
by Unanon
Summary: Emma Frost is a teacher, first and foremost, but some lessons arrive from the strangest source.


Title: Buying Diamonds with a Penny  
  
Author: Unanon  
  
Rating: PG-13  
  
Summary: Emma Frost is a teacher, first and foremost, but some lessons arrive from the strangest source.  
  
Acknowledgements: Mamfa for the much-needed beta… Oy! Emma just can't decide what tense she wants to speak in… Gah!  
  
~~~~~~~~~  
  
She made me uncomfortable from the beginning, but I could never quite place my finger on exactly why. Sean chalked my uncharacteristic reticence towards her up to selfishness and distrust of any creature whose mind I could not properly invade. Quite naturally, his behavior was, from the first, exemplary. He was honest, understanding, supportive, and kind; all virtuous, noble traits I did not possess at the time and I certainly don't possess now.  
  
Now.  
  
Now I still dare to call myself a teacher. I am a teacher. Everything I think or do arises from that fact, from the crystal purity of my intentions for those few unfortunates whom cruel chance has placed beneath my care. Fate must truly be blind to grant me these seemingly endless opportunities for redemption. Yet, I am truly cursed, locked into an endless cycle of grief and reparation. My task is a simple one. I merely intend to offer the securities and opportunities that were denied me during my own dark youth; however, I never manage to succeed in instilling the elusive scrap of tenacity necessary for survival.  
  
My path was forged with the Hellions, my darlings, my first children brutally lost. Generation X was my holy grail, my chalice of forgiveness and the blessed opportunity to begin afresh, untainted, unspoiled. Things didn't quite turn out the way I'd planned; I was again unable to protect the children from forces that would consume them, both external and internal. Jubilee suffers from abandonment issues and a fear of her own strength. Paige struggles to step out from beneath the shadow of her older brother and her poverty-stricken heritage. Angelo and Jono both hate themselves with a liberality that challenges even my own depths of self- loathing. The St. Croix children redefine the term 'family struggle.' Everett, the most well-adjusted and promising of all, is dead. As dead as those barely-known children in Genosha who suffered only briefly beneath my tender care.  
  
Yet Jean still wonders why I am a bitch.  
  
It was a lesson from the most overlooked and forgotten of my former charges that saved my life that terrible day on that island. The secrets she holds within her scarlet skin astound me still. Neither Monet nor the twins, Claudette and Nicole, were able to tell me anything about her; to them she was just a handy body, useful only for their duplicity. After the twins dispossessed her, when she exhibited a singular personality and awareness, we were all so shocked.  
  
And guilt-ridden.  
  
During our private conferences, Sean and I railed endlessly. Why had we not noticed? How much of the individual we knew really reflected the personality and behavior of this unknown girl, this sudden stranger? The St. Croix girls, unflappable as ever, were unrepentant of their long-term body-snatching. I suppose I cannot fault them for highly developed survival instincts, especially since they claim never to have been aware of another mind, another identity trapped along with them. They had blithely assumed that the body, red and painfully untouchable, was a fabrication of Marius, their brother, designed to punish them, forcing them some way to atone for their 'sin' of not joining him in his madness.  
  
We continued to call her Penance. Her mind remained closed off, firmly barricaded even against my most persistent battering. We distrusted her despite her overtures of friendliness. She was an enigma. We couldn't reach her. We sent her away.  
  
I admit, I feel a little guilty about that as well.  
  
Before he sent me on the world's most ill-fated teaching trip to Genosha, Charles and I had a discussion about her, about Penance. He attempted to be comforting. "There are those we simply cannot reach, Emma," he murmured smoothly, sipping his tea. "It does not diminish our worth as educators." I knew without having to look that he was thinking about his own failures: the misfit Rogue still enduring life without control, embittered and prickly Marrow, Colossus enslaved by grief, loss and honor, the others, young and vibrant, who died while sporting his emblem. He probably even counted Magneto as a failure, perhaps his greatest. My lips twitched at his self-righteousness, but it was a cold comfort. None of those who come to us for help should fall between the cracks.  
  
With Penance, however, I must admit that I did not try. She seemed unreachable, beyond my assistance both physically and telepathically. I had never encountered anyone so remote, even among the strange and vast underbelly of mutantkind. I convinced myself that it was this very isolation that made me uneasy around her, that her alien nature explained why I unobtrusively avoided crossing her path on a regular basis.  
  
I lie to myself quite convincingly. It is, I have found, one of the most effective survival mechanisms, not only of mutants, but of all humankind.  
  
In truth, Penance frightened me. Perhaps it was a feeling of kinship, of recognition of something within her that I avoid within myself. Something I have shut away and compartmentalized; a menace I have escaped. Strong minds survive somehow, often through pointed avoidance of that which causes pain. It was clear that the girl's mind had somehow remained intact, despite the unimaginable exploitation of her physicality by the St. Croix family, first as lunchmeat to Emplate then later as an unwilling vessel for the girls. Her mind was strong, unreachable; it is unlikely that her defenses were natural. It was unnerving that one so young had prevailed over so much without assistance. My every thought of her still makes me shudder. She reminds me of things I'd rather forget.  
  
In that brief time between her dispossession and her departure, I would often glance up to find her looking at me. It was unnerving. She was a complete unknown to me, yet I felt as if she could read every etching life had carved into my being. I was relieved to be rid of her presence, to walk the halls of the academy without the irrational fear that those knowing blue eyes lurked around every corner, waiting to expose me.  
  
When the Sentinels brought it all down, crumbling around me, in that stretched out space in time between life and inevitable death I remembered her. Her figure danced behind my tightly shut eyelids while my ears registered only the screams and terror of the dying. My nostrils flared with the scent of charred flesh and my every nerve turned molten in sympathetic agony and still, despite the projected terror of millions, the only concrete image in my mind was of Penance. Hard, impenetrable, untouchable and silent. Safe.  
  
Since Genosha, I often tell myself that I have forgotten, that the softness that feels pain, the weakness, lies dead within me. I submit willingly, forsaking my increasingly costly soul to hardness and impassive coolness of mind and body. It isn't too much of a reach; I've cultivated an icy persona for as long as I can remember. Those who claim to know me best compliment my newfound brilliance with a wink and a smile. They say it suits me, but when I turn away I feel their eyes slide over my sleek new form questioningly, even pityingly. By developing such an obvious barrier, I have unwittingly exposed my true vulnerability. I am more naked in my diamond form then even I, the eternal exhibitionist, am comfortable with.  
  
I still hate Penance, but not for the reasons you might assume. I hate her because I never suspected her secrets, secrets that are mine now as well. As much as I glitter in the sunlight, I do not merely reflect. Diamond hardness is more than a shell, protective and beautiful; it is also a container. Mine renders me headblind, immune to both physical and emotional pain; she is completely untouchable. These barriers were formed reactively, contracting densely around the buried corners where all difficult truths are hidden, stored away, tamped down and avoided. The shell gets thicker, denser, harder the deeper the lie goes.  
  
Yet, she has shown me a way to withstand despite the fact that I have revealed myself by my unlikely survival. I owe her my life. I am grateful; I will have to remember to thank her someday. Like her, I now wear my secrets on my skin for anyone to see. It is fortunate that so many neglect to truly look.  
  
~fin~ 


End file.
